Today many people desire a God who is nonjudgmental. This God will not judge anyone for their behavior. Even if He does judge, He always forgives, whether or not a person is repentant. He never condemns any act as intrinsically wrong. If the Bible or church teaching that something is essential for salvation, this God says, “Religion gets in the way of a relationship with me. Be spiritual, not religious.” This God demands no religious duties. This God is easygoing when it comes to moral rules. For this God, Hell is an impossibility. All people will spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

One of the amazing facts about contemporary America is that some people will actually worship a deity like the one described in the above paragraph. This pusillanimous being is as worthy of worship as Santa Claus dropping down a chimney. A God without judgment is no God at all. He can be merciful–and mercy only makes sense in the context of judgement anyway.

If God is our Creator, it is reasonable to suppose that He would reveal Himself to man, not only though natural revelation but also through special revelation. He would have further reason to reveal Himself if human beings are fundamentally flawed. Now human beings are fundamentally flawed–it does not take the mass killings of the twentieth century or the conflicts of the twenty-first to see that this is the case. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his Gulag Archipelago:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.”

God would, if He is the personal God in which Christians believe, provide information essential for deliverance from this flawed state. For Christians, God reveals Himself in Holy Scripture (in Roman Catholic thought, through Holy Tradition as well). Both sources of authority for Christianity reveal a God of both judgement and mercy. God holds people responsible for both their moral and religious lives. Humans all sin–they all do things morally wrong–sometimes not knowing an action is sinful, sometimes being controlled by a force such as lust, and sometimes they plan to perform an action they realize is wrong. All sins are forgivable under the condition of repentance. An obstinate lack of repentance yields the judgment of God, and Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition make is clear that God will allow those who wish to sin to keep to themselves. It is not as much that God withdraws from them–He allows them to withdraw themselves. Since God is the source of all being, goodness, and happiness, their state can only lead to misery. Saying to the sinner, “THY will be done” is a form of judgment, for it says that the sinner cannot live in the presence of God. The attitude of rebellion against God can be fostered by a rebellion against the moral law (which is a subset of the natural law that is available to all people who are able to use their reason). Rebellion against religious limitations, especially against the “scandal of particularity” of Christianity, can also influence someone to stop following God’s revelation to man.

The Church sets theological limits through the Creeds, short statements of belief that summarize the fleshing out of Scripture via Holy Tradition. There are certain beliefs Christians must affirm–if a Christian openly denies these key beliefs (the bodily resurrection of Christ, for instance) and teaches that error, he is liable to be excommunicated. This does not imply he is going to Hell, but the attitude underlying heresy, a pride that refuses to submit to the Church’s teaching, may reflect a character that would not enjoy being in God’s presence.

Holy Scripture and Tradition also make moral demands–no one can keep them perfectly, and they are challenging. “Love your enemies” is almost practically impossible to follow, though some Christians have done so. Avoiding hatred, envy, spite, jealousy, and excessive anger are imperative on the Christian, but no one avoids practicing at least one of these flaws at some point in one’s life. The church states that abortion and active euthanasia as well as physician-assisted suicide are morally wrong–and there is an arrogance to the claim that “I have the right to determine the time and manner of my own death.” Such arrogance is spiritually dangerous. The refusal to follow the Church’s sexual morality can occur due to weakness–or someone may be sexually immoral on purpose yet realize it is wrong. There is spiritual hope for such individuals. But God’s judgment may fall upon those individuals who say that “wrong is right” and “right is wrong” concerning the Church’s sexual ethics. This also reveals an arrogance, a refusal to submit to legitimate authority. Such arrogance may result in God’s judgment in the sense that God may allow those people to do what they will on their own. I am sure He will always be open to receiving them, but they, due to their free will, could decide to eternally reject God. “The doors to Hell are locked on the inside,” said C. S. Lewis.

The Christian God is worthy of worship not only because He is Creator of all things, but also because He is our ultimate judge. He is also a God of mercy–but mercy extends to those open to correction and repentance. Others will refuse to receive such mercy, and God’s judgment is to allow them to live in such a state in their own world–that is, Hell. I personally do not want to worship Santa Claus. God in His glory, justice, and mercy is the only being worthy of worship.

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Whether America is more or less Christian at this time is hard to determine. Certainly the Fundamentalists are in the news. Generally the USA is considered one of the major Christian nations. This leads me to the following question: Is there something in Christianity that inclines people to cruel and violent behavior? I realize that violence and cruelty exist all over the world –but Europe and the America have been the centers of Christianity. And no other places have been so bellicose as these areas nor have any other areas indulged in so much exploitation of the poor countries. For a religion often tagged as the religion of love, there has been a great deal of hate, anger and fear. Many would say that Christianity is a religion of fear. Hell, for example, is present as a transitory condition in the Indian religions. But not as eternal damnation. Also ironically morality plays a much more serious role in the religions of the Book than in the Eastern religions. The same could be said of judgement–something which Buddhism encourages people to move away from. For example, a Buddhist eschews falling into designating some moments as good and some as bad as though the universe made mistakes. Clearly an important part of American life is having an enemy–the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or Iraq or the Islamic world in general. And when the drones kill as the do innocent people, well, we do not care because in some sense they are part of a bad nation and bad people.
The Fundamentalists of course regard as fundamental not sayings like lover your enemy or turn the other cheek–heavens, no–but they do love anything violent in either testament. Out of this confusion we get phrases like “legitimate rape” — I believe he meant actual as opposed to feigned rape, but the point is a kind of wide spread insensitivity, almost an inherent brutality. Forget the Sermon on the Mound which sounds a trifle liberal anyway.
So are we to understand that the Europeans early on were so barbaric and cruel that in spite of Christianity they twisted it into a violent and cruel affair or was it the other way around. Clearly Judaism doesn’t suffer from too much compassion nor Islam either. Is there a bitter root going back into the Old Testament that continues to feed a poison into all three religions?
Typically the scriptures of the Eastern religions have an element of tranquility and peace entirely lacking in the Western scriptures. And there is little in the way of fear mongering. Some interesting scientific research has determined that the pineal glad secrets a molecule (as in DMT) during near death experiences and other extreme situations. Also it has been shown that magnetic earth changes can cause the same thing to happen to the pineal gland. Maybe the East has more of this force operating? Regardless of the Originators intentions the Western religions seem to have imposed a kind of totalitarian reign in the West which now a strange secularism is carrying on with things like the drug wars, the other wars, the attacks on civil liberties, the economic destruction, etc. Even the food and water supply is under attack. And ironically the religions seem to be fully supportive of this. We could say with much justice that in the West everyone and every institution has sold out to Mammon! Still I do wonder if a careful examination of the Old Testament would reveal some very twisted, venomous elements that have slowly migrated into all three major Western religions.
My own hunch is that part of Christianity is simply missing. The part which Jesus was referring to when he mentioned those that have ears to hear. The part we have been left with is fairly primitive and dangerous as history reveals and has resulted in events like the killing of Cathars. Women, children and the old in a most ruthless way not unlike the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Teach by example!

Late in the 17th century George Fox visited America for several years, He went up the East Coast but stopped before Massachusetts where the first European woman had been hung for being a Quaker by the Puritan Christians. It is a great shame that America shaped itself around the Puritans instead of George Fox. Were the Puritans even Christians?
The teachings and example of Jesus ought to be the pinnacle of Christianity for most people. But it clearly is not now nor perhaps ever was. One might suppose that Jesus being God caused the majority of Christians to regard his sayings and example as way beyond them and so resigned themselves to dogma and whatever faith they could muster.
At which point it seems to me Christianity became mostly an ideology of
exceptional-ism. Just like the United Stares.
As time went along after George Fox left the “soulless” blacks arrived to build the South. The native Americans were genocided. And most American Christians when they weren’t persecuting emigrants like the Catholics were repressing their sexual energies and pursuing treasures here on earth where frankly their hearts were definitely located.
So here we are now early in the 21st century persecuting Muslims. Wonder why they are rioting? Well, it might have something to do with the drones and devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are smart enough to realize that we want their property. Their oil and whatever it is in Afghanistan. Along with Israel American is on its way to being the least humanitarian nation on the planet. By their fruits you shall know them.
How did this come about given that the Europeans had according to the Christians the only true religion?
The young people today make perfect sense to me. They are perceptive enough to realize just how corrupt all the institutions are. They realize that if you get money you are good no matter how you came by it; that the billionaires who have off shored millions of jobs are just as bad and perhaps worse than the persons who get abortions. Or who are gay! They see the real morality which is ultra egocentric. The artistic persons merely reflect the sordidness of life in America. Lady Gaga is telling Americans who they really are. Time one might think for some real soul searching by a lot of people. Yes, it is sometimes referred to as introversion, spending time alone and coming to terms with all those repressed memories. And institutions can do this too. Christianity needs to dwell back on the heretics they burned and the witches, the peoples they killed because they were not Christian in the right way . . . The USA has a lot of inner work to do. Humility will be the sign this project has been undertaken. But that might be a century away.